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One hour from now, our alpha patient is landing in Seattle for treatment. Many people want to understand who we are. Here is an introduction.

Rooftop 519 developed from our belief that very sick or injured children all over the world are frequently left to die or suffer because their access to hospital care is limited or non-existent. We exist to bridge the gap for these children, helping them to travel from their community to the place of their healing, and then back to their family.

We are compelled to help these children because it is the most obvious of human responsibilities we have to our creator. We serve these children, their families and all who are a part of the healing process in love.

Patients apply through our partner organizations in other countries. We target children ages 2-12 who have orthopedic, cosmetic, maxillofacial, blast trauma, burn trauma and benign tumor issues. We are being asked to consider cardiac care. Our target is to treat cases that require between six weeks to six months of care. Our expectation and motivation is to create transformational community impact because of this medical work.

Each child needs hope. Rooftop 519 was named after the story in Luke chapter 5 verse 19 where a paralytic man is lowered through the roof by his friends to be healed by Jesus. We are those friends. We use our abilities and resources to get kids to the healer. Our mission is “Healing the sickest kids in the world in the name of Christ”. It excites me to think that 2000 years after the paralytic’s story, we can still live the adventure of bringing someone to the Healer.

Like the paralytic’s friends, we know that our challenges are immense. It is no easy task to carry a child to health. With a tenacious spirit we will rescue those kids. When the doors and windows are closed, we go through the roof.

We’ve had a recent breakthrough at Rooftop. Our alpha patient, a term used to identify our first patient, has received the green-light for travel. We will buy her ticket tomorrow. Exodus, a 13 year-old burn victim, is traveling to live in Seattle for the next five months. Her scarred and deformed skin is being replaced with grafts from her legs. This won’t just give her mobility and beauty; it will give her life.

It’s not being melodramatic to describe her in this way. Americans are unexperienced with children who look like Exodus. Our culture isolates us in an unrealistic cocoon of beauty. Even the ugly among us could be considered attractive in many countries. Exodus’s injuries are too bothersome for most to lay eyes upon. If her injury had happened in the U.S., she would have received immediate medical attention. One year after her injury she would have hardly had any reminders of the pain inflicted by a terrible fire. In Liberia, with scars like hers, she has very little hope of working, playing or possibly even marrying.

I have a really difficult time expressing the emotions I feel of this girl. She is my daughter’s age. As I type this through tears, I try to picture myself in Exodus’s parents shoes. Hopeless and helpless, they are praying for a healer. They can’t take out a loan to pay doctors, and they can’t just show up at a hospital without cash in hand. There is no cavalry for rescue and no possible solution within reach. The sheer frustration of these two parents has the potential to drive them insane. It would crush me.

Now they all have more than hope. They have an excitement I can’t even begin to imagine. Exodus has a passport, a visa and thanks to some generous donors, a ticket on the way. A family in Washington is excited to welcome her into their home. Doctors in Portland are ready. It’s been about 18 months since we began dreaming about helping kids like this. Only by the strength of God have we come this far. We will treat Exodus. We will have a story to tell like non other. We will radically change her family and her community in Monrovia. To God be the glory.

I haven’t posted for over two weeks. I apologize. When I first started blogging, I figured a few friends and my wife would read, and maybe on a good day, I could get my mom to read. As it turns out, there are more of you reading that I would have thought. And now I’ve let you down. Please forgive me.

In October 2010, we planted a satellite campus of Puyallup Foursquare Church. This was a thrill for us; planting the first out-of-state satellite for a church we helped plant in 1998. We faced challenges, we were personally stretched, and Cheryl and I were greatly fulfilled in our leadership roles. The Lord is doing an incredible work here.

Several months ago, the leadership team at Puyallup Foursquare began working with us to make some adjustments. Through our planning and prayers, we determined as a team to plant a church under the Southwest District of Foursquare. Roger Archer and team encouraged and supported our decision.

I never purposed to become a senior pastor, and I’ve been very reluctant to accept the role. The pastoral examples I’ve watched over the last dozen years are charisma-driven and animated. I would call myself neither. After two weeks of careful prayerful consideration, I have pledged to become the senior pastor of Desert Foursquare Church. (Our denomination will still have to appoint me to this position).

At the age of 18, at Northwest Foursquare Church, a woman prophetically shared that I would be a pastor. Worship, teaching and ministry are all passions, but the responsibility of shepherding feels simultaneously constricting and freeing. This is not my comfort zone. Here I am, a willing, joyful servant who loves to see Jesus work in people’s lives.

The last several weeks have presented many obstacles. Our equipment is heading back to the NW to serve Puyallup’s needs (they have a very busy summer), and we are not incorporated as a 501 (c) (3). There are many other details, but I shared those two with a visitor to our church on the Sunday we made the announcement that we are transitioning to a church plant. I didn’t know this when the silver-haired couple asked me about our church that Sunday morning, but they used to pastor a Foursquare Church in La Quinta.

Dale and Patti Downs are their names, and they offered to connect us with the resources we require. The most important resources was the gift of their friendship, and the relationships they have here in the desert. Within two weeks of their visit, they connected us with many people in the desert that are excited and encouraged that we are launching this fall.

So for the last few weeks, my pastoral duties have just about doubled. Now we are going through the process of incorporating and building a team of people who will launch Desert Foursquare Church. We are excited to spend this summer incubating our core team of staff and members (about 30 people in all). This is a critical time for praying and seeking God’s will for our church. If you’re reading this now, please take a moment to pray for us in this journey.

I could write a book about our adventure, but I’ll keep it short for now. I’m happy to respond to questions to this post, so feel free to ask any question. Thank you to all of my brothers and sisters who are praying with us.

I Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

In eighth grade I had my first encounter with a tenacious spirit. I was a heavyweight wrestler, better than some and less than others. My desire was to get in shape, not to beat anybody up. We had a great team, and one of our top wrestlers was a seventh grader who seemingly weighed about a hundred pounds less than me. He frequently bested wrestlers 20 or 30 pounds more than he.

“I could take him”, I thought. We were in practice, so I jovially stepped up when it was time for him to wrestle with the big boy. My 190 lbs to his 110 or 120. He wiggled, wormed and fought with every ounce of energy he could muster. Once when he was on his butt and I was fighting up his torso, I knew I was going to pin him. I was wrong. His tenacity… not just during that match, but, in every practice, gave him an advantage that my weight and muscle couldn’t overcome. I don’t remember the exact outcome, but it certainly wasn’t a feather in my cap.

Faith is like a muscle. Faith should be tenacious. This concept is often a business principle, but it is primarily a theological tenant. Jim Collins wrote a lot about tenacity in “Built to Last” and “Good to Great”, and leaders like Rudy Giuliani and Jim Sinegal have codified the executive tenacity we expect to see in leaders. Collins, Giuliani and Sinegal have something in common… the belief in disciplined exercise of faith.

The biblical principle is found in Hebrews 10:35-38 describes a relentless, unprecedented and supernatural faith. Likewise, James 1:2-4 tells us to grow our faith. It is the practice and application of faith that is beyond our own mustering that enables us to do more than we can do on our own.

I am going through a season of growth right now. My belief in God’s call in my life is greater than ever. I tenaciously believe in what he is working in me for his purpose. And yet, there is not a reason for my faith OTHER than the fact that I am called. I stand on the precipice of the unknown. But it is known, because the Lord doesn’t lead us to places where he doesn’t want us. Hindsight faith would be easy… like 20/20 hindsight vision. I look forward to telling the stories of God’s faithfulness in the year 2011 as He has provided everything we need, at the right time and in the right way.

This week we hosted an event at College of the Desert where we were able to evangelize to over 120 people. We boldly proclaimed the name of Jesus in a place that is filled with hurting people. Faith is the conduit for evangelism.

This week we partnered with a top medical professional who has incredible connections that will benefit the children of Rooftop 519. Only God could orchestrate these things. Faith is a catalyst for action.

This week I have taken inventory of the things that matter most. I am blessed beyond what most people will ever imagine. Faith is not fueled by external circumstance.

I would not trade this last year for anything. We have had more struggles, more pain and more loss (I am afraid to count how many friends and family members have died this year). Cheryl and I are growing in our faith. We are becoming tenacious about the things that matter, even when we can’t see answers to problems. We are more resolved, more determined and more patient than ever before. Faith does that. God creates that resolve within us when we fight the good fight of faith.

I posted the question on my facebook page recently, “What do you think is our greatest social problem in the world?” It seemed a rather lively topic, so I thought I would share my thoughts in my blog rather than attempt to nudge in one more soundbite-type response. My thanks in advance to all who posted.

I believe the single greatest social ill is our fractured relationships. Humans, in my experience, are terrible at prioritizing, communicating, focusing and nurturing healthy relationships with God, self, others and creation. When most people look at a social ill, they stare at the stalk and say, “Let’s come up with a cleaver way to pull that weed!”

A recent conversation with a dear friend about pornography is a perfect example. He and another friend had come up with a way to significantly hinder the porn industry’s ability to process credit cards. It seemed legal and ethical in the way they proposed it, and I believe it would have cost MasterCard and Visa financially to continue to do business with pornographers, not to mention a terrible headache for smut peddlers. I advised my friend not to proceed because I believe that the roots of the industry would have only dug deeper in the midst of an assault.

The reason porn exists is because of broken relationships. The industry depends on broken parent-daughter relationships, parent-son relationships, and primarily, because of a brokenness in our ability to serve the Lord and follow His ways. Because we also have a broken relationship with financial resources, we monetarily incentivize, to the tune of billions of dollars, the further degradation of the family through porn.

This isn’t a diatribe about one industry, so let’s move on. One response to my facebook post was that “intolerance” is our greatest social problem. This is absurd (my apologies to the author), because you simply cannot tolerate everything. Alexander Hamilton is credited with telling us that, “Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.” The idea that you can allow everything to exist in harmony denies the fact that, when left to our own devices and desires, sin ensues. The primary Wiccan/Pagan tenet, “…do what ye will, harm none.”, is ridiculous when followed to it’s natural end. Can any social ill be done in private that does not hurt another person? At the very best, we use sin to isolate ourselves from necessary relationships, and at the very worst, we grieve the heart of God.

I do not believe we have too few rules or values in society. We have millions of laws, and most people would tell you they believe that families ought to be more loving, ought to show respect, ought to, ought to …. ad nauseum. The values aren’t gone from society. They are being intentionally rejected. My belief is that people in Western societies are filling ourselves with what is comfortable and entertaining rather than what is relationally healthy. I could really get on my soapbox here, but I’ll summarize by saying that I only have one T.V. in my house, and that might be one too many.

My friend, Brian Fulthorp, wrote the following on my facebook post: “most problems are symptomatic of broken relationships: divorce, war, fighting, killing, all that…. and like others have noted, all of that is borne out of our alienation from God our maker.” I completely agree. To his list, I feel compelled to add my personal conviction that it pleases God when we care for creation. This was a primary request of the Lord in Genisis 2:15, and I believe he is pleased when we steward the earth well.

Also to the list, and of utmost urgency, is a realization that we have to steward our relationship with ourselves. We tend to be sentient organisims that are particularly cleaver at seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but humans were created very differently here. We should, at times, chase after the thing that causes us incredible discomfort. I believe the greatest human attribute it to boldly pursue something that inflicts tremendous pain in the act of serving the Lord and serving others in His name.

I love that someone on facebook finally asked for the solution. Although I am far from mastering the solution, I feel I am living it, to some degree. I tend to my relationships with God, self, others and creation, in that order, stewarding each and owning none.